“I’m not playing this game,” he said simply, quietly.
“Game?”
He glanced at the older man, then shifted his gaze back to the woman who haunted him. “As I said, return the jewelry you stole and you and your son can leave the island. Teresa will stay here. With me, until you bring me the gold dagger that was taken from me five years ago.”
“You cannot hold my daughter here against her will,” Nick said, the steel in his voice telling Rico this was a man accustomed to being obeyed.
“It’s that,” Rico said, staring at the other man now, “or I go to Interpol.”
Nick waved that threat away with a negligent, well-manicured hand. “Interpol doesn’t worry me.”
“Once I hand over the information I have gathered on your family over the years, I think you’ll feel differently.”
Dark brown eyes narrowed. “What information?”
“Enough to end you,” Rico promised, ignoring Teresa’s soft gasp.
“Impossible,” Nick blustered, but concern glinted in his eyes. “There has never been evidence found against my family.”
“Until now.” Rico gave him a smile. “Private investigators can go where the police can’t. And if the law should receive this information from an anonymous source…”
Nick Coretti—or Candello, as he was registered here—looked as if he’d been cornered. And he had.
Now the years of hiring the best private investigators in the world and collecting data and evidence were finally paying off—just as he’d known it would one day. Rico had been methodical as only a King could be when faced with an enemy. Add to that heritage the Latin blood that swam in his veins and revenge tasted sweeter than he had even imagined.
“Your sons are not always as careful as their father,” he said, watching suspicion and then a cautious wariness shine in Dominick Coretti’s eyes.
“You’re bluffing.”
Rico smiled slightly and, without taking his gaze from Nick’s, said, “Teresa, tell your father I don’t bluff.”
“He doesn’t, Papa,” she whispered and the sound seemed to echo in the plush suite. “If he says he has evidence, he does.”
A frown crossed Nick’s face then and Rico knew he had the man’s attention.
“What is it you want?”
“I’ve already told you. I want what your family stole from me five years ago.”
Nick shot a look at his daughter. “I think you stole something from me, as well.”
He hadn’t stolen Teresa, Rico thought. He’d let his heart rule his head for the first and last time in his life. And just look where that had gotten him.
“Fine, then,” he said. “Call it an exchange. You return my property and I will return yours.”
He knew he was being insulting and he just didn’t give a royal damn.
“Property?” Teresa hissed the word as her back went poker straight and her shoulders squared as if for battle. She lifted her chin and looked up at Rico. “I’m no one’s property. Least of all yours.”